US:US judge weighs Google book copyright case

The two sides reached a tentative $US125 million settlement in the case in 2008, but it was rejected in a 2011 hearing.
Photo: AP

A US federal judge has pointedly questioned lawyers for the Authors Guild in a long-running case on whether Google's book-scanning project violates copyright law.

The two sides presented oral arguments in a hearing on whether the case should be dismissed, or whether the authors can maintain their challenge to the massive digitisation project.

US District Judge Denny Chin said a core question in determining the case is whether there is "benefit to society" in helping users find information from books, facilitating inter-library loans or permitting data mining.

All of these functions have been cited by proponents of Google's Library Project in legal briefs, Chin said.

A lawyer for the guild said that while some uses might benefit society in some instances, it should not override authors' rights to control the content they created.

"Then there's a question of whether Google has to pay for it," Edward Rosenthal told the court.

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The authors' group, in turn, has asked the court to deny Google's defence that the copying is a "fair use" that allows a deviation from normal copyright protections.

Google has scanned more than 20 million books so far in the project.

Books in the public domain — without current copyrights — are made available online to the public for free. For copyrighted books, Google offers a searchable database that displays snippets of text.

The guild has argued that content creators should control their work and that Google's display of the excerpts violates copyright norms.

It also argues that Google's objectives are purely commercial since its main goal is to boost the use of its search engine, which generates advertising revenue.

While some users of Google's project may have worthy aims, Google's use of the material are not fair use, the guild argues.

Google counters that its book-scanning program provides a valuable societal benefit that can provide much sought-after information to users, permit innovative ways to analyse texts and generally enhance knowledge.

Chin said Google's use of the material can be fair use, even if there are commercial benefits to the company.

He also looked at the guild's argument that the Google service harms authors by diverting business away from Amazon and other booksellers once consumers realise they can find excerpts on the Google site for free.

Chin conceded that it is possible a reader might decide to abandon a possible purchase because of the Google site, but questioned whether that was a "reasonable" possibility.

Rosenthal said readers will stop buying books on Amazon because of the Google site.

Daralyn Durie, representing the tech giant, said there was only the tiniest chance a user could cobble together enough content from the snippets to avoid buying a book.

The two sides reached a tentative $US125 million settlement in the case in 2008, but Chin rejected the agreement in a March 2011 ruling, concluding it was not "fair, adequate and reasonable".